Crawling over trucks at this US camp, their colourful t-shirts stretched over protruding bellies and their baseball caps make them stand out for what they are: civilian truckies in a war zone.

Horne, a middle-aged farmer and truck driver from Mississippi, says he is one of 600 American hauliers hired by the US Defence Department to supplement the massive logistical effort underway in Iraq.

"History -- we're making history," he says as he squints to keep dust out of his eyes.

In front of him, colleagues pump military-grade fuel out of their rigs into giant bladders sitting on the ground, while nearby hundreds of military fuel trucks wait their turn or stand parked on the soft, chalky sand.

Horne and the other contractors started work this week, transporting hundreds of thousands of litres (gallons) of fuel from Kuwait to forward supply bases in Iraq in trucks rented from companies in Gulf states.

What's their incentive to leave home and family to live this tough, dusty, hot life for, in some cases, up to a year?

For some, it's their patriotic duty, helping the US troops to see through the vision of US President George W. Bush.

For others it's the pay.

"For some of 'em, the package can go to six to eight thousand bucks (dollars) a month," Horne affirms.

British troops who have also been pressed into service to bring in fuel for the thirsty US tanks, trucks, helicopters and humvees pushing north learn of the civilian pay scale with incredulity.

"60,000 quid (pounds) a year? You've got to be joking!" says one driver from the 7 Transport Regiment waiting to offload his truck. "I'm changing jobs!"

The 32-truck British convoy he is with has brought in another 870,000 litres (230,000 gallons) of JP8 fuel to the supply base after a long drive from a camp in Kuwait. The average pay for the British military drivers is about 1,600 pounds (2,400 dollars) a month.

The convoy commander, Captain John Fleming, says his unit has been trucking in fuel since this week to meet a sudden demand from US commanders.

But at the supply base, a US officer, Major Pete Crean, says: "There's no crash crisis or anything."

The entire ground war effort "eats probably over a million gallons a day" in fuel, he says, but insists that US logistics convoys have been able to keep up without too much problem.

For some reason, though, his superiors have decided to top up an undisclosed number of "fuel farms" -- vast areas of terrain dotted with the giant fuel bladders -- south of Baghdad.

"We're just building them up as we go. We want to build large stocks," Crean says, adding that US military was tapping into the excess capacity of its British ally to get the job done faster.

The task in supplying these gargantuan military service stations is daunting.

At the entrance to the camp, escorted lines of trucks back up as a convoy bumps along the packed dirt road to exit past the guard post.

Inside, there is a confusion of more lines of big rigs, parking areas, an officers' compound closed off by razor wire, and dirt basin after dirt basin holding the tan-coloured fuel bladders.

Over everything swirls a fine dust that gets into mouths, hair, eyes and obscures features just metres (yards) away.

Trucks bogged in the chalky fine dust are laboriously dragged out by specialised tows.

Nearby, an unexploded mortar, perhaps from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, sits in a cordoned-off area.

The British soldiers take pictures of themselves squatting close to the weapon.

It's a memento of their tough, unglorified role in this war -- part of the long shaft of the spear that is now piercing the Iraqi capital.

SPACE.WIRE